Get an UNO not only its having no bug issues or no untested stuff left, its also providing you 2 chips on one board , one being the standard ATmega and the other being the USB to Serial converted chip that you may in the future use to make your UNO HID device by doing DFU programme so PLAY gets extended.

I haven't seen a dual-inline-pin version of the Leonardo - only the surface mount version. With a Uno, you can pull the 328p from its socket and put it into a circuit after programming it. You won't (as far as I know) have that option with the Leonardo.

As a newbie with both an Uno R3 and a Leonardo I need to echo everyone else and tell you to get the Uno. The Leonardo can be super finicky if you try to do crazy things like upload code, use a serial monitor, use it as a USB input device, or look at it funny.

Perhaps. We get some posts with one question from the original poster, and then days of discussion among every one else.Sometime with comments months! later. So a little over a week behind is not too bad

Adafruit's Boarduino is a nice Uno-compatible clone, and inexpensive. It has no USB interface on board, so an FTDI cable or one of these is needed for programming. Makes sense to me not to duplicate that on every board. The Boarduino is open-source, so if a person wanted a bunch (maybe 10) and was willing to get the boards made and buy the parts, I'd bet they could be made for $10 a copy, maybe less.